


Just Like the Movies

by spasticat



Category: Vampire Diaries (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-06-02
Updated: 2010-06-02
Packaged: 2017-10-09 21:16:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,367
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/91709
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spasticat/pseuds/spasticat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jeremy turns.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Just Like the Movies

**Author's Note:**

> Excellent beta work by kachera and kadymae. Title accidentally taken from the song of the same name by Regina Spektor. Accidental in that I didn't know there was a song of the same name and after having read the lyrics...it fit. What a happy accident.

Jeremy walks out the door, his hood up, and it takes everything in him to stay upright and move forward. He feels so fucked up, so sick. There's the smell of blood coming from the kitchen, the smell is familiar yet now so different from anything he's smelled before, and it wants him to stay. To taste and take it in. It pulls at him.

He leaves. He knows he has to leave. Quickly. He hears a feminine voice that's so familiar but oh so different and it's calling out to him from the kitchen from where the blood is. That Voice is what woke him up and he knows, not exactly why or how, but he knows he has to get away from it as fast as possible.

The Voice, that is and is not Elena's, calls after him and it spurs him to leave even faster. Even at her angriest Elena's voice never held such a cold razor sharpness to its edge. The door shuts behind him and he fears that The Voice will give chase, be at his ear and snap at him and take himself away from himself, but it doesn't follow. It's an echo left at the house, distracted by the arrival of newcomers. People that Jeremy hides from by running to the darkness of the trees, people he doesn't want to see after all that's happened tonight. He is thankful, in a selfish way, that they stop That Voice, make the imposter speaking with it also hide, stop it from following him.

~

Jeremy sits on a bench in the town square, facing one of the many old trees that have been here since the town was founded. He bends over and sucks in a breath. It's all pain now and though it's late in the night his ears are numb from the shouts and clangs of a town center still active after a long day of celebration. He wants to get closer to those sounds even though right now the noise hurts him. They're way too loud and they make him angry.

These people killed Anna. All of these people drinking and talking and singing off-key to music pumping out from the bars lining the street. He blames them. He can hear them all, from the Mystic Grill to the biker bar down at the other end. Horrible things happened tonight and they don't care. There was a fire, people were snatched, people died, Anna died. The people of Mystic Falls continue the Founder's Day celebration as if nothing bad had happened. They don't _care_.

Jeremy cares.

His caring flows. It's red and angry and it hurts. It pushes him to take and he knows what it wants. He's not stupid. Jeremy just didn't think it would be done so soon—or so alone. When he was ready Anna would have been here, helping, telling him what to do now that he was changing. It's too much for him to do alone.

Jeremy shoves away from the bench and stumbles off to the nearest alley. That's how it's done in the movies and the cheap paperbacks. Attack from a dark alley. All dark shadows and moody and he laughs at the thought because even he knows he's being melodramatic. But the pain really drives into him and it makes him go a little mad. His thoughts are all over the place and so he sits down where it's darkest and stares at the brick wall opposite. He's closer now to the restaurants and bars, the noises and the voices so much louder and painful, and he wonders if he'll have to be here all night before someone comes by.

It seems ages until he hears voices come close to the alley. They pass and do not enter and in that passing Jeremy swears he hears drum beats. Wet drum beats. He catches himself licking his lips at the sound and he is slightly disgusted with himself. No one told him this would be all ridiculous with him pathetically pining for heart beats, hiding away in the dark, feeling miserable for himself because he's too scared to actually do _it_.

More drum beats, this one a single beat with no accompaniment, and finally this one also comes close. Jeremy crouches in the dark, head craning to the side. He listens and wonders, 'When?'. The beat, the footsteps pass by and do not notice him in the shadows and Jeremy knows it's now or never.

He's clumsy. From behind he shoves the person against the opposite wall. It's a guy, bigger and heavier than himself, but Jeremy feels strong enough to keep him against the wall. Jeremy's hands grab blindly, desperately, and rip at fabric as he tries to gain a hold. The guy slips to the right, angling out from Jeremy's grip and he's opening his mouth to shout, he's already let out a "Fuck' and a 'What-the', when Jeremy slams his own head into the other's. That's when the blood screams out to Jeremy, as it drips down the man's forehead from where he's hit the guy. Jeremy realizes it's one of his friend's dads and that the man is now a bloodied mess. His nose is smashed in, eyes are glazed and rolling up, blood spreading down across his mouth, over his chin.

Jeremy leans in without a second thought and licks at the blood and _it_ is the most wonderful thing he's ever tasted. It is light and air and it surpasses even the coolest, freshest water he's ever swallowed on the hottest summer day. It tingles at his tongue and he can't get enough. The man falls sideways as his knees buckle, flopping doll-like to the ground and Jeremy follows. He's still licking at the blood, he wipes at it with his fingers and then he feels the change. Pressure along his jaw and gums and he grabs a hold of the man's shoulders and brings him in closer. He bites down through the flesh of the man's neck and it isn't easy, the angle's all wrong and there are scrapes and holes until Jeremy finds the right spot.

It is pure, from the veins and the flesh, and it keeps on coming. It sings with a humming sound, and as the drum beat slows down the humming continues strongly. Jeremy realizes he's the source of the humming, a pleasure response, and as he comes back to himself, less frenzied, he stops. There's no more blood for him to take and he stumbles up, disappointed that there isn't more, feeling drunk, but no longer in pain.

Jeremy wipes at his face. He can't believe what he has just done. He looks down at the man lying near his feet. There is a niggling sense of remorse sitting faintly in Jeremy's chest. What he did was wrong. He knows that because it's what he learned in school and in life and as a Gilbert. But it doesn't take much for him to push away that sense of wrongness. Because what he just did feels so _right_.

He doesn't want any evidence of what he's done to be seen, which is impossible and ridiculous, because he's covered in it. Blood is on his shirt, his face, his hands, and though he's licked and sucked on every finger, traces of it dry in the creases and under nails and it won't come off. Not this way. A part of him says not to care but at the moment he knows he's fucked. Pretty soon the sun will come up and he has no idea where he should go or what he should do next.

Jeremy knows not to go back the way he came and so he moves further down the alley, further into the dark when he sees her, the one who, earlier that night, spoke with Elena's voice. She has her face, too. This should scare him but it doesn't.

She stands in his way and tilts her head, "You're too young. Anna was also too young." She holds out her hand and Jeremy stares at it, takes a hold of it, "But I think I'll let you live."


End file.
